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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
Russia
Peru
United Kingdom
Indonesia
Italy
Iran
Colombia
France
Argentina
Germany
South Africa
Spain
Ukraine
Poland
Turkey
Romania
Philippines
Chile
Ecuador
Hungary
Czechia
Malaysia
Canada
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Bulgaria
Belgium
Tunisia
Vietnam
Iraq
Thailand
Egypt
Netherlands
Bolivia
Burma
Japan
Portugal
Kazakhstan
Greece
Paraguay
Guatemala
Sweden
Morocco
Sri Lanka
Slovakia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Austria
Georgia
Nepal
Switzerland
Jordan
Serbia
Honduras
Croatia
Moldova
Saudi Arabia
Lebanon
Cuba
Israel
Azerbaijan
North Macedonia
Afghanistan
Panama
Armenia
Costa Rica
Ethiopia
Lithuania
Uruguay
Algeria
Ireland
Libya
Kenya
Venezuela
Slovenia
Belarus
West Bank and Gaza
Zimbabwe
China
Dominican Republic
Oman
Latvia
El Salvador
Zambia
Namibia
South Korea
Uganda
Sudan
Albania
Kosovo
Nigeria
Cambodia
Denmark
Kyrgyzstan
Syria
Kuwait
Botswana
Jamaica
Malawi
Montenegro
United Arab Emirates
Trinidad and Tobago
Australia
Mongolia
Mozambique
Senegal
Cameroon
Estonia
Angola
Bahrain
Uzbekistan
Rwanda
Somalia
Finland
Eswatini
Ghana
Suriname
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Guyana
Madagascar
Luxembourg
Taiwan*
Mauritania
Tanzania
Haiti
Cote d'Ivoire
Fiji
Bahamas
Singapore
Lesotho
Qatar
Mali
Cyprus
Belize
Papua New Guinea
Malta
Guinea
Cabo Verde
Congo (Brazzaville)
Saint Lucia
Gabon
Burkina Faso
Maldives
Togo
Mauritius
Hong Kong
Nicaragua
Barbados
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Benin
South Sudan
Laos
Andorra
Tajikistan
Seychelles
Timor-Leste
Central African Republic

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
Russia
Peru
United Kingdom
Indonesia
Italy
Iran
Colombia
France
Argentina
Germany
South Africa
Spain
Ukraine
Poland
Turkey
Romania
Philippines
Chile
Ecuador
Hungary
Czechia
Malaysia
Canada
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Bulgaria
Belgium
Tunisia
Vietnam
Iraq
Thailand
Egypt
Netherlands
Bolivia
Burma
Japan
Portugal
Kazakhstan
Greece
Paraguay
Guatemala
Sweden
Morocco
Sri Lanka
Slovakia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Austria
Georgia
Nepal
Switzerland
Jordan
Serbia
Honduras
Croatia
Moldova
Saudi Arabia
Lebanon
Cuba
Israel
Azerbaijan
North Macedonia
Afghanistan
Panama
Armenia
Costa Rica
Ethiopia
Lithuania
Uruguay
Algeria
Ireland
Libya
Kenya
Venezuela
Slovenia
Belarus
West Bank and Gaza
Zimbabwe
China
Dominican Republic
Oman
Latvia
El Salvador
Zambia
Namibia
South Korea
Uganda
Sudan
Albania
Kosovo
Nigeria
Cambodia
Denmark
Kyrgyzstan
Syria
Kuwait
Botswana
Jamaica
Malawi
Montenegro
United Arab Emirates
Trinidad and Tobago
Australia
Mongolia
Mozambique
Senegal
Cameroon
Estonia
Angola
Bahrain
Uzbekistan
Rwanda
Somalia
Finland
Eswatini
Ghana
Suriname
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Guyana
Madagascar
Luxembourg
Taiwan*
Mauritania
Tanzania
Haiti
Cote d'Ivoire
Fiji
Bahamas
Singapore
Lesotho
Qatar
Mali
Cyprus
Belize
Papua New Guinea
Malta
Guinea
Cabo Verde
Congo (Brazzaville)
Saint Lucia
Gabon
Burkina Faso
Maldives
Togo
Mauritius
Hong Kong
Nicaragua
Barbados
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Benin
South Sudan
Laos
Andorra
Tajikistan
Seychelles
Timor-Leste
Central African Republic